An Attitude of Gratitude: Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I'm not sure if it's my "To-Do" list that has catapulted me from my bed at three a.m., or my writing muse. There's a half-empty can of Diet Coke on my kitchen table, and my iPod shuffle is playing a mix of Chuck Pyle, Bachman Turner Overdrive, The Foo Fighters, Three Dog Night, Rilo Kiley, and Shawn Colvin*. A jug of Murphy's Oil Soap is right next to my laptop and I started a load of laundry, but I'm not holding a dust rag in my hand and my house doesn't smell all fresh and lemony yet, so I'm going to chalk this up to an early morning rendezvous with my writing muse, rather than the good-kind-of-pressure I feel from the list of things I need to accomplish before all three of my daughters, my husband's family, and some friends converge upon our home for Thanksgiving.
I spent many nights at this table during the winter and spring of 2007 when I wrote my first novel, Courage in Patience, a story of hope for those who have endured abuse, and perfecting the conditions (see list*, above) necessary for accessing the story of Ashley Nicole Asher, age 15, who finally gets up the nerve to face the truth about her life and in the process finds out what it means to be free. It's a theme that, prior to entering therapy four years ago to deal with stuff that happened to me when I was a child, was foreign to me. It's like I didn’t realize how lost I was until I started to get found.
When I first entered therapy, my psychologist (who is awesome, by the way) told me that the road I was embarking on would be like a barefoot journey from Texas to Alaska and back, with all the weather along the way. There have been times I have been convinced that the easiest thing to do would be just to give up, step in front of an eighteen-wheeler, and welcome the relief it would be to find out what roadkill feels: NOTHING. Vultures, schmultures, right? These are very common feelings for people who are working on recovery from childhood sexual abuse. But, like the Tom Russell song says, "It goes away."
On this day before Thanksgiving, words fail me when I try to describe how grateful I am to have an amazing support system in my husband, three daughters, and therapist. Even when I wanted to lay down and die, these five people are the biggest reason that I kept going even when learning to be an authentic person and refusing to lie to myself any more hurt like hell. I'm past those feelings now, and I thank God for blessing me with people who loved me through the darkest days. Sometimes that love was (and is) the tough kind of love, the kind that let me know that even though I didn't see myself as a strong person yet, they DID. They DO. And now I do, too.
I am a teacher as well as a writer. I know that a lot of the time, the only time you hear about teachers is on the news when they do despicable things or their school district (cough- cough Dallas ISD) mishandles its money and has to lay off a bunch of hard-working innocent people who poured themselves into their vocation every day and trusted their administration to do its job. But here's some news from a teacher that you may not hear enough: I LOVE MY JOB. Standardized testing and the minor imperfections of my vocation aside, I LOVE MY JOB. It nurtures the most fundamental parts of who I am as a person.
It's the dog-days of school before the Christmas holidays, and I can guarantee you that I'm not the only teacher with the count-down posted on the board and updated daily. But I don't mind going to work, and I recognize that that's not something that all people can say. I get up every day and I get to go work with amazing people. My partner teacher and I, in addition to working well together, genuinely like each other, and that is a blessing. We are in sync with our approach to our students and we support each other. I have worked in situations before when I witnessed team members at each others' throats. But I've been very lucky. The faculty and staff at my school are all about the kids and teamwork, and, on top of that, we have fun at work. What more could I ask for?
Every day I am privileged to work with children who I love as if they were my own. My students are people who, just by being themselves, allow me to see the world through their eyes and to want to make this world a better place by helping them reach for the stars, regardless of where they are coming from. I am passionate about social justice because it MATTERS, both on the microcosm of the playground and as we see it unfold on the world stage, when a child born into a mixed-race marriage and raised by a single mother can achieve the highest office in a country-- and, under his leadership, I have no doubt that the United States will once again be respected in the international community. A wise person once told me that hope is the opposite of fear. My students and their parents have hope for the future. Our country chose hope. And I do, too.
On this day before Thanksgiving, I am grateful that hope exists. If I didn't believe in the power of hope, I would have, sometime during these past four years, chosen the roadkill option.
I am thankful for my support system. I am thankful for the rough patches on my journey to recovery, because those dark places have made the light that I'm going toward even brighter. And, on this, the day before Thanksgiving, I am grateful that I can now get to work, preparing for a celebration of gratitude by cleaning a wonderful home that my husband designed, that our family built on his family's land, in beautiful East Texas, in the United States of America. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!